Re: Is there a limit on the max number of macro variables in a

Thanks for all the replies.

Dumping millions of macro variables into a macro variable table is a bad
practice. I am just curious to know, besides memory problem, if there is a
maximum number limited on creating macro vars; I did not find this on
document. It seems that there is not.

Thanks again.

Tom

"Tom Smith" <tomquin99@GMAIL.COM> wrote in message
news:200906231537.n5NAlGcK023801@malibu.cc.uga.edu ...
> Thanks for all the replies.
>
> Dumping millions of macro variables into a macro variable table is a bad
> practice. I am just curious to know, besides memory problem, if there is a
> maximum number limited on creating macro vars; I did not find this on
> document. It seems that there is not.
>
On my system (SAS 9.1 running on a Windows NET_SRV platform) the macro
symbol table defaults to 4,194,304 bytes. So you can stuff macro variables
into the memory allocated for the symbol table until you run out of room -
there is no limit to the number of variables, but there is a limit to the
amount of memory set aside to hold them.

You can change the amount of memory allocated to the symbol table either up
or down using the MSYMTABMAX option. The only limit on the amount of memory
allocable is the largest integer the operating environment can represent.

Whatever the value of the MSYMTABMAX option, once you run out of memory, any
further macro variables are written to disk (if MSYMTABMAX = 0, then all
macro variables are written to disk) as entries in the WORK.SAS0ST0 catalog.

So, the maximum number of macro variables is partly machine dependent - how
much memory is available, what is the largest integer the operating
environment can represent, how much disk space is available - and partly
macro variable dependent - the longer each macro variable (in terms of
bytes), the fewer variables will fit into this total.